Rush

Rush are kindly giving us a full four months to wrap our minds around their 19th studio album, Clockwork Angels (Universal) - which many are calling the band's best in 30 years and which just won album of the year at the Prog Awards in London - before unleashing the live version on us.

By the time the Canadian rock legends hit the Air Canada Centre on October 14 and 16, fans will have deconstructed drummer Neil Peart's narrative about a distant land ruled by a watchmaker and memorized the ever-shifting songs well enough for capable air-drumming execution.

The show is three hours long and features, for the first time, a string section. Adding to the epicness, science fiction author Kevin J. Anderson just published a novelization of the album, Clockwork Angels: The Novel, through ECW Press. When you hear the rack tom solo, turn the page.